Dollar Road: A Novel (English and Norwegian Edition)

By Kjartan Fløgstad

Book Overview

Selmer Hoysand leaves his family's small farm and finds work in a factory, in a novel chronicling Norway's transition from a predominantly rural, pastoral society to an industrialized welfare state.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807115258
• ISBN13: 9780807115251
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

wonderful novel

Flogstad's Dollar Road ("Dalen Portland" in Norwegian) is a compelling, often quite brilliant picaresque on the road to Social Democracy in Norway. To me, it's an absolute shame that more people haven't read this book, and I do not think that you have to have lived in Norway (or read copious amounts of Marx and Hegel) to enjoy this book--though it certainly helps. It touches on themes of industrialization, international trade, neo-Marxism, philosophy, science...It's a very brilliant work, an amazing first novel, rich with detail and consistently intellectually engaging. A great novel--possibly the best from Scandinavia in the last 50 years

Probably the best Norwegian novel after WWII.

The novel is a story of how the farmer population in a Norwegian town walks down 'Dollar Road' to the capitalist industrial society, and how that changes their way of living ... but not necessarily their way of thinking. The author combines this large societal perspective with close-up portraits of the people walking Dollar Road. Two characters are of special interest. One is a somewhat pathetic representative of the more or less uninteresting lives in the new everyday of industrial society. The other becomes a sailor who experiences great adventures in South America and ends up being a half-hearted radical librarian, marrying a girl who happens to be his sister in blood. And he just walks out of the last pages knowing that he also is the half-breed of capitalism. I have read this book (in Norwegian) four times - discovering new details and perspectives each time. Strongly recommended!